Sunday, December 30, 2012

Another Day Another Dye

Since there was more blue dye left in the jar yesterday decided to use it up. But before I did thought I'd find the real source of the dye recipe. On top of the jar it said, "Warm Wool #113, Pro-Chem. Hmmm, should have read the other words beyond Warm Wool and I would have realized it wasn't Cushing dye. So this morning I went to my Beautiful Wool dye book by Laurice Heath and looked at recipe #113 and saw a snippet of wool I'd stapled in the book to record what my last dye job looked like. Had I originally done that would have known that 2 tablespoons would give me a darker dye result....duh. I mean, Saundra, what's the sense of keeping dye records if you don't use the process?These are the results and approximately one yard of wool was dyed using two pots with 1 1/2 tablespoons of dye. Actually one pot had a smidgen more wool so used just under 2 tablespoons. Oops, in this picture I almost cut off the wool to the far left.

This is what I started with. Notice cream colored wool came out greenish because......yup, yellow and blue makes green. And that stripe wool I've used in other dye jobs and it does not take color well so won't use that in an experiment again but am sure it has a task it can complete one day, like maybe hook thru it. Besides it is rather thin and not much fun to hook with.

Believe it or not I've still more blue dye left but am over it with that jar and tired of doing the blue. Yet, having the blue is good because I want to hook the Santa which is a free pattern in the latest RHM and it will be a good sky. And of course the camera flash is making the wool appear lighter. I'll probably use a little of this and some of what I dyed yesterday for the sky.When I returned all my dye equipment to the shelf in the garage, I took account of other left over mixed dyes in my tray. I have Tawney and Faded Apricot recipes by Karen Kahle, High Meadow Green which was the background for my Wee Folk rug (also from Beautiful Wool), a pinky flesh from Sara Gault's Woolie Gardyn dye recipes and Snow but can't remember the source for that dye ~ then the Warm Sky.... sigh. Guess my gusto to get rid of all those pre-mixed dyes has wained somewhat after two days. But one of my New Year's resolutions is to slowly use them up and I'll bore all of you with the before and after photos.My original plan was to give you a peak at what hooking I'd accomplished today on the lion rug but think I'll hold that off until tomorrow..... New Year's eve. Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a great Sunday evening.Saundra

3 comments:

Saundra, I enjoyed your reply to my comment yesterday. I really should just jump in and marry some wool. I dye basket reed all the time -the thing is, it doesn't have to be as precise as the wool dyeing. Call me chicken! ~Ann

About Me

This is Ben, a handsome Rottie adopted from a local vet referral.
I prefer wide cut primitive style rugs but I have hooked a memorial profile of my departed Rottweilers in #3 and it was beautiful. I know that I can successfuly hook narrow cuts but my heart is with wide cut primitives as our foremothers use to do.
I always told Shadow (my departed Shepherd mix) that she would be a wide cut girl and I hooked her profile in #8 strips in 2013.